Current Information:

Born-Leytonstone

Mill Road Cemetery, Thiepval

The Battle of the Somme (July-November, 1916)

By the beginning of October, 1916,  the Battle of the Somme had been raging for three months. Thousands of men had already been killed or wounded or were simply missing, never to be seen again and and just a few square miles of the French countryside, all in the southern part of the battlefield, had been captured from the enemy. Mistakes had been made by the various commanders and would be continued to be made but there was no turning back as the British, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders and Canadians carried on battering away at the German defences in the hope of a breakthrough, So it continued all the way through to November with nearly every battalion and division then in France being drawn into it at some stage. In the end the German trenches had been pushed back a few more miles along most of the line but the cost in lives had been staggering. By the end of the fighting in November, 1916, British Army casualties numbered over 400,000, killed, wounded and missing.

39th Division arrived in France in March, 1916 and at the end of August had moved down to the Somme. Here they joined the Reserve Army which was holding the line along the northern stretch of the battlefield. The bulk of the fighting at this time was being conducted by the Fourth Army to the south of the Albert-Bapaume road but by September, the struggle was being resumed further north as witnessed by the attack astride the River Ancre on 3rd September in which 16th Rifle Brigade of 117 Brigade suffered dreadful losses. Between 5th-10th October, 16th Rifle Brigade were back in the front line trenches on the Ancre. The 7th October was a particularly bad day for the battalion when 11 men were killed and another 17 wounded but apart from recording these figures the Battalion Diary gives no further information. The artillery war was constant and fierce throughout the Battle of the Somme and it was probably shellfire that caused these deaths. Henry Wray was one of those killed.